From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263918AbTLELA1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Dec 2003 06:00:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263922AbTLELA1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Dec 2003 06:00:27 -0500 Received: from hermine.idb.hist.no ([158.38.50.15]:34317 "HELO hermine.idb.hist.no") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263918AbTLELAU (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Dec 2003 06:00:20 -0500 Message-ID: <3FD067CF.4010207@aitel.hist.no> Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 12:11:11 +0100 From: Helge Hafting Organization: AITeL, HiST User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031107 Debian/1.5-3 X-Accept-Language: no, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" CC: Jason Kingsland , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause? References: <3FCF696F.4000605@softhome.net> In-Reply-To: <3FCF696F.4000605@softhome.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Ihar 'Philips' Filipau wrote: > GPL is about distribution. > > e.g. NVidia can distribute .o file (with whatever license they have > to) and nvidia.{c,h} files (even under GPL license). > Then install.sh may do on behalf of user "gcc nvidia.c blob.o -o > nvidia.ko". Resulting module are not going to be distributed - it is > already at hand of end-user. So no violation of GPL whatsoever. Open source still win if they do this. Anybody interested may then read the restricted source and find out how the chip works. They may then write an open driver from scratch, using the knowledge. Helge Hafting